Praising God through the Storm

For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways," declares the Lord. "As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts are your thoughts."  Isaiah 55:8-9

Our family has weathered many storms in the past few years. One of the toughest was watching our teenage son being placed in handcuffs, not once, but three times. Here we were a homeschooling Christian family with a juvenile delinquent. Shame and a broken heart threatened to tear me apart and hubs was beside himself with mourning. To make things worse, some people (friends, family, Christian friends) were quick to judge and point fingers. But that is okay because it brought us to where we needed to be, at the foot of the cross, together as a husband and wife.

What they couldn't see, what we couldn't see, was that God was answering our prayers, and perhaps the prayers of others. God broke unhealthy relationships my son had with others and God also used my son to get Bibles into the juvenile county jail. They only had one to share among 120 inmates.

When my kid first told us that other kids wanted to read his Bible, a little light went off and the above scripture rushed to my mind. We had to be creative at getting those Bibles into the jail, but we were able to get them in and some of the kids even got to take them home. Praise the Lord!

Prior to getting those Bibles in, I remember asking hubs how were we supposed to praise God for this. It wasn't easy, but scripture says in Ephesians 5:20 Sing and make music from your heart to the Lord, always giving thanks to God the Father for everything, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. And so in our sorrow and without seeing eyes, we praised Him, because what else were we supposed to do?

We may never know all that God has used our time of trial for, but we can trust that He's used it to glorify His name and to bring people closer to His redemptive grace.  And what's more important than salvation for the lost? Including that of our son. He may not be walking perfectly but he's figuring out his faith. One thing for sure, God is going to use him and his testimony to set other captives free by bringing them to the knowledge of Christ.

This past May, a week before our son came home from a group home, we received word that hubs has malignant melanoma. I remember sitting outside the jail after praying with hubs and saying I pray we never have to go through anything harder than this. When we received the word, once I was alone, I sat on the front porch and cried out to God, "I don't want this testimony, Lord. Not this one."

It took me a few days to decide to trust God and praise Him in this too, to accept that no matter what, His ways are higher than my own. I don't know what tomorrow holds, but my God does and I chose to praise Him.

Have you praised God through a storm? Are you going through something right now that you need prayer for?